Recent features and deliverables:
Google Maps
Google Maps
Autocomplete
Wireframes
What?
I am a core member of the team building Real Time Farms. Real Time Farms is a user-generated, online, nationwide food guide that helps people learn where their food comes from. My focus is designing and developing Real Time Farms features and interfaces to provide our various users with the best experience possible.
How?
Real Time Farms runs on Google App Engine. We use the Python Google App Engine environment along with technologies such as the Tornado Web Server, Python Paste's Web Test for testing our server and Mercurial for version control. Alongside standard web technologies (i.e. HTML, CSS, JavaScript), our user interface makes heavy use of the jQuery cross-browser JavaScript library.
For design work, I use goal-directed design techniques for user interviewing, user modeling and prototyping. OmniGraffle and Photoshop come in real handy for wireframing and graphic design.
A mockup of a "Library Resources" widget for Sakai 3
What?
I am organizing a multi-institutional, goal-directed design effort to integrate library resources with Sakai 3, a next generation collaboration and learning environment used by universities worldwide. We want to provide Sakai 3 users with a better experience for finding, using and sharing licensed scholarly content purchased by university libraries.
How?
I am conducting a goal-directed design process along with 10 universities around the world. I am organizing user interviews being conducted at these institutions and then leading an interaction design team at the University of Michigan Library to analyze the data and build personas, scenarios, prototypes and requirements to inform the design of our Sakai 3 product. Such a project has never been done within the Sakai community and in addition to practicing goal-directed design, I am educating and training others on the process and formalizing it to be used by the larger Sakai community.
Links
- I maintain our project's public wiki
- Our presentation on Integration of Library Resources and Services in Sakai 3 at the 10th Sakai Conference in Boston, MA.
A mockup of a "Library Resources" widget for Sakai 3
What?
I am organizing a multi-institutional, goal-directed design effort to integrate library resources with Sakai 3, a next generation collaboration and learning environment used by universities worldwide. We want to provide Sakai 3 users with a better experience for finding, using and sharing licensed scholarly content purchased by university libraries.
How?
I am conducting a goal-directed design process along with 10 universities around the world. I am organizing user interviews being conducted at these institutions and then leading an interaction design team at the University of Michigan Library to analyze the data and build personas, scenarios, prototypes and requirements to inform the design of our Sakai 3 product. Such a project has never been done within the Sakai community and in addition to practicing goal-directed design, I am educating and training others on the process and formalizing it to be used by the larger Sakai community.
Links
- I maintain our project's public wiki
- Our presentation on Integration of Library Resources and Services in Sakai 3 at the 10th Sakai Conference in Boston, MA.
CloudSocial dock: allows learners to manage learning tools hosted anywhere on the web
What?
Working with Professor Chuck Severance, I have developed an alpha version of the CloudSocial learning management system. CloudSocial is a next generation learning management system that enables teachers and learners to carry social learning tools around with them anywhere on the web instead of being constrained by learning tools and content that must live within a traditional learning or course management system.
How?
I designed and developed the CloudSocial dock and CloudSocial.org. Design was based on rapid prototyping and feedback from stakeholders. The dock is an interactive layer of social learning tools that can be used on any web page and was developed using jQuery, AJAX, CSS and PHP. CloudSocial.org is a website that provides teachers, learners, learning tool developers and content providers with interfaces to manage CloudSocial learning tools, courses, content and security settings. CloudSocial.org was built using XHTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL. Working with Professor Severance, I learned architectural design patterns for cloud computing services. CloudSocial uses the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability protocol to securely connect learners to remote learning tools hosted anywhere on the web.
Let's Pizza! paper prototype (left) and initial design on the iPhone (right)
What?
I co-founded Troubadour Mobile, a mobile social networking software company along with Adam Torres and Hung Truong, two classmates at the School of Information. We won a local venture capital competition to receive $25,000 in funding along with office space, entrepreneurial mentorship and legal and financial support. We designed a number of social, location-based iPhone applications: Let's Pizza! allows people to share pizza with neighbors; Let's Meet! allows people to set up meeting locations with friends; Let's Draw! allows people to draw together with friends across the nation.
How?
We analyzed the market as well as opportunities available to us and decided to create social, location-based apps for college students. We conducted user interviews, developed personas and started iterating very quickly, showing users our paper prototypes every couple of days. I developed the architecture and user interface of our flagship app, Let's Pizza!, using the iPhone SDK. We conducted usability testing on a prototype version of Let's Pizza!, came up with refinements and developed business plans to monetize the product.
Sakaibrary Project Citations Helper in production at the University of Michigan
What?
Our distributed team of seven designers, developers and managers enabled librarians to build research guides within the Sakai online collaboration and learning environment that seamlessly incorporate library-licensed content by designing and developing a single AJAX-based authoring interface. We also created the ability for universities all over the world to search and import citations from library-licensed databases and Google Scholar within Sakai by building the Citations Helper enterprise Java web product. All software we developed is freely available under an open source license.
How?
I worked on the Java architecture for connecting the Citations Helper to library metasearch engines using the O.K.I. OSIDs to lower barriers for other institutions to use our code. I also designed and developed the second iteration of the Citations Helper user interface based on user feedback, using AJAX to streamline workflow for users. After releasing the Citations Helper, I supported institutions worldwide in setting it up. I was responsible for the design and development of the subject research guide authoring user interface and used rapid prototyping relying heavily on jQuery, AJAX, XHTML and CSS to iteratively define the user experience.
Links
- I maintained our project's public wiki
- Sakaibrary Project
Mockup for our winning design, Papyrus
What?
Our team of four master's students at the School of Information won the 2009 Library 2.0 Student Design Competition with our Web 2.0 design, Papyrus. Papyrus is a personalized library interface that increases the usage of library content by making library content easier to access and more relevant. It accomplishes these goals with a single interface featuring a dynamic, personalized feed of library content shared by those relevant to the user such as instructors, librarians and friends.
The University of Michigan Library and School of Information created the Library 2.0 Student Design Competition to challenge students to develop conceptual designs for how the University of Michigan Library can use emerging technologies to connect with and serve patrons in the future.
How?
As the only human-computer interaction student on the team, my role was to organize and lead our user-centered design process. Together we conducted stakeholder interviews, a literature review and held ideation sessions based on our user research. I took our ideas and created a paper prototype which I then converted into a functional prototype using XHTML, CSS and jQuery.
Mockup of recommended changes for the 'Volunteers' page
What?
Our usability team of three human-computer interaction graduate students made recommendations to increase the usability of the Ann Arbor Ten Thousand Villages local store website and increase the effectiveness of the website in accomplishing organizational goals.
How?
We conducted user interviews, a comparative evaluation, heuristic evaluation and usability testing for the Ann Arbor Ten Thousand Villages website to arrive at our recommendations.
CampusRoost network visualization using GUESS
What?
CampusRoost was a University of Michigan student startup that aimed to create a social network based on homes around campus instead of individuals. I studied CampusRoost during the Fall '08 semester in two courses: Networks (with one other teammate) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (on a team of five).
How?
For network analysis, we used tools such as Pajek and GUESS to uncover interesting trends in the various networks being created in CampusRoost and made recommendations to strengthen the network through implementation of new features. For Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, we conducted a contextual inquiry, interviewing a number of CampusRoost users to understand how CampusRoost was being used to facilitate real-life interaction.
AndOr sizing widget mockup
What?
AndOr was the conceptual business idea of our Information Architecture professor, Dan Klyn. AndOr is a high fashion shoe brand that has a very unique and completely bifurcated shopping and ownership experience: left and right shoes cannot be purchased at the same time and the left shoe costs 75% less than the right. We were challenged to create an information architecture strategy for AndOr's online store.
How?
Given the extreme nature of the business idea, our team needed to distill the niche market that AndOr would address. We discovered the persona of the "sneaker-freaker." Using information architecture strategy from the seminal Polar Bear IA book, we interviewed individuals fitting the "sneaker-freaker" persona, watched documentaries and came up with strategies that would set AndOr apart. I focused on the perfect fit and interviewed shoe-sizing experts to arrive at the mockup seen above.
Prototype of our proposed shopping experience redesign
What?
Fry, Inc. is an e-commerce services provider, headquartered in Ann Arbor, MI. Fry's user experience team approached our Interface and Interaction Design course wanting to bring innovation to the online shopping experience for their clients.
How?
Our team of five human-computer interaction graduate students, Buy With Fry, worked with Fry to narrow the project scope. We settled on one of Fry's largest clients, clothing retailers. We went through contextual inquiry, built personas and scenarios as well as lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes. Our major innovation was making the online shopping experience more like an in-store shopping experience, with ways to easily mix and match outfits and rating and sharing them with others.
JustConnect in production at the University of Michigan
What?
Our team of three human-computer interaction graduate students built and launched, JustConnect, a social networking site to connect alumni and current students of social justice organizations on campus. JustConnect has since spread beyond SERVE, a social action and community service learning student organization at UM, and IGR, the Program on Intergroup Relations at UM, and has over 120 active members, exceeding growth goals.
How?
Our Content Management Systems course builds Drupal websites for non-profit clients. Having previously worked with SERVE and IGR to design an alumni social networking website in a volunteer capacity, I proposed the project for the course. Our team designed, developed and launched JustConnect by conducting user interviews, creating a stakeholder analysis, personas, scenarios, information architecture and workflow analysis. I lead custom CSS and PHP work within the Drupal content management system. We all performed usability tests on JustConnect before launch to ensure what we built met user and organizational goals.
